Endoscopes have been widely used in the medical and industrial fields. Recently, endoscopes have been developed which are to be swallowed by the patient and the images relayed to equipment outside of the patient by wireless means. These endoscopes have been miniaturized and placed within a capsule, as shown for example in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,604,531 & 7,244,229. After the being swallowed the capsule travels passively down the esophagus, through the stomach and through the small and large intestines and bowel before leaving the body naturally. During its travels through the body, the endoscope captures a plurality of images of the organs it passes through.
In the known capsule endoscopes, the optical lens and illumination unit are installed at the transparent front end of the capsule enclosure and fixed relative to the enclosure. Thus, the capsule endoscopes are only able to capture images of objects located at the front side thereof. However, when a doctor observes an organ of a patient, the doctor is more interested in the images of inner sidewalls of the organ. It is difficult to get images of sidewalls of an organ when using the known capsule endoscopes.